


Pretty Bird

by Sevidri



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Body Horror, Gen, I tried to write wingfic and this is what happened instead, Podfic Available, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:37:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sevidri/pseuds/Sevidri
Summary: Dick and Jason have a run-in with a sorceress. Things take a turn for the unexpectedly horrifying.





	Pretty Bird

**Author's Note:**

> For the Jaydick Flashfic prompt Not Human! Orginally I wanted to write shippy wingfic but somehow ended up with Gen body horror? Oh well, I hope you like it anyway! Please mind the tags.
> 
> A thousand thanks to frecklebomb for betaing this for me and for being the lovely and encouraging person that makes it possible for me to write weird stuff like this!

The self-declared sorceress smiled, her lips pulling back to reveal teeth that were just a bit too sharp to be human. “My, you sure are eager,” she said, dodging Dick’s escrima sticks by phasing in and out of existence and letting his whole body pass through hers. Great, Jason thought as he reloaded his gun, special powers, that sure was a great sign.

Dick of course didn’t let the sudden disappearance of his target faze him, neatly tucking his body into a roll and jumping back up, ready for another attack. “They call you Nightwing, do they not?” the sorceress continued, floating in mid-air without a care in the world. The probably-sorceress. The longer this fight continued, the surer Jason felt that she wasn’t just a human who’d been dipped into the mystic arts a bit too long, but had never been human to begin with. 

She didn’t talk like a fae, and was too playful for a demon, but it wasn’t like there weren’t plenty of other evil magical pests out there. 

“I think she’s a Chaos Lord,” Dick said through the comm, then paused. “Chaos Lady? Do beings of pure chaotic energy use gendered language or is that just how it translates in— “

“Focus, dickface,” Jason hissed, unloading another clip in the direction of their enemy. Instead of phasing again, she summoned a wall of red light that left the bullets to harmlessly rattle down on the warehouse floor. “How do you get rid of a...Chaos Entity?” He could practically hear Dick’s smirk at the pause and felt his cheeks get hot in response.

Thankfully, Dick didn’t say anything, or Jason might have had to start shooting at him instead. 

“You can’t. Or, well, we can’t. Only a— being of order can do that,” Dick replied, and then as if to contradict his own words, lunged at her again. The woman’s smile had disappeared, her eyes narrowed, and this time she didn’t dodge or block Dick’s attempts. Instead she reached out one hand — clawed, Jason could see from this angle — and chains started sprouting out of thin air, wrapping around Dick’s limbs and immobilizing him mid-jump. 

“I do not like to be ignored,” she snapped, and with a quick gesture moved the chained-up Nightwing to her eye level. Jason should do something, needed to do something while she was distracted, but with her powers he was more likely to hit Dick than her. Still, the way she ran her eyes over Dick’s struggling form made something dark and unpleasant curl up in his chest.

“You are Nightwing,” she said, more definite this time. “A Kryptonian name. Yet you are not Kryptonian. Simply a regular, boring human.” If the situation hadn’t been so dire, Jason would have laughed at that. He was pretty sure no one had ever called Dick boring to his face before. 

“Still, you are rather pretty,” she mused, and Jason’s fingers tightened around his guns involuntarily. “A pretty bird, yes, that seems fitting.” She snapped her fingers and the chains around Dick disappeared, dropping him unceremoniously to the hard concrete from several feet up in the air. Jason wasn’t worried, he used the opportunity to start shooting at her again. It felt good, even if it didn’t do any damage, and he could still buy Dick some time to get his bearings back and come up with— 

A scream stopped him in his tracks and made all the blood in his body freeze. It wasn’t like he’d never heard the sounds of someone in pain before, that noise had been familiar even before he’d ever put on a cape. But never—

Dick cried out again and Jason was at his side in an instant, eyes frantically searching his body, trying to find an entry wound, a broken bone, anything that would explain why— 

Dick curled himself up even tighter, letting out a whimper, like he didn’t even have enough energy left to scream, and that was somehow even worse. “N! Nightwing, what’s wrong? What’s— Where does it hurt? Tell me what I can do,” Jason pleaded, his hands hovering uselessly over Dick’s shoulders, unsure if touching him would only cause more pain. 

Something underneath Dick’s suit moved. At first Jason thought it was just his shoulder blade, a normal movement caused by the way Dick was still writhing around on the floor, but— there was something unnatural about the way the fabric shifted. Like something was caged in, trying to break free.

“Suit,” Dick gasped out, sounding more strained than Jason had ever heard him. “Off. Get it off.” Jason complied without question. His hands found the hidden catches that held together the Nightwing suit without trouble and he managed to unsnap them in the right order to avoid electrocuting himself, even with how much Dick was thrashing around. Even with how much his own fingers were shaking.

He didn’t get the zipper down more than a few inches before he had to pause. There was so much blood, spilling free now that the suit wasn’t stemming the flow anymore, spilling over Jason’s fingers, staining everything a wet, horrifying red. He couldn’t even see Dick’s skin underneath. He was tempted to just zip the suit back up, let the tight fabric put enough pressure on the wound to keep Dick from bleeding out while he hurried to the cave, where someone would know what to do. Just when he had decided to do just that, he spotted a fleck of blue among the vivid red of the blood.

“More,” Dick gasped out. “It’s still—” He didn’t get further than that, but it wasn’t like Jason needed to know exactly why the suit was hurting him. He peeled the stiff fabric down further, until Dick’s entire back was bare. Then all he could do was stare.

There were two ugly, jagged cuts along the curve of Dick’s shoulder blades, the torn skin looking like it had been ripped apart rather than cut. Even worse, he could see something inside the wound, something sharp and awkward-looking that was trying to push free, but was caught against the edges of torn flesh. There were spiky protrusions underneath the skin, bulging out of Dick’s back grotesquely, like something was trying to press through from the inside. It must be causing Dick excruciating pain.

“D— Nightwing, there’s— there’s something stuck in your back,” Jason got out, and it wasn’t particularly eloquent, but he had no way to describe it.

“Get it out,” Dick whined, his voice croaky from all the pained noise he’d been making and Jason didn’t hesitate any longer. Without further ado he grabbed the blue thing and tried to pull it free, but stopped when he felt a resistance. It seemed to be attached to...something inside of Dick. Jason felt sick. 

“I can’t—” he started, but Dick let out another cry.

“Please, Jay,” he begged, and that was bad, really bad, if even the golden boy forgot about the no-names-in-the-field-rule. 

“I— It’s in your back. Attached,” Jason said rather unhelpfully, but he didn’t want to say the actual words, didn’t want to tell Dick he was scared of injuring his spine.

“Don’t care,” Dick gasped, and to Jason’s horror he tried to reach back and get his own hands on the wounds. His fingers were slick with blood within seconds as he tried to find something to grab onto, something he could rip out to get the pain to stop, but his back was too slippery to get a hold on anything. There was no limit to the amount of damage he could do in his panic.

“Stop! Stop, I’ll do it,” Jason said, hastily pushing Dick’s hands away and grabbing the strange object partially sticking out of Dick’s right shoulder blade. Before the doubts could start to creep in again, he braced himself against the hard concrete and pulled.

A feather came free, with a wet squelching sound, and Jason froze. _A pretty bird._ No that wasn’t— He looked back down at Dick’s upper back and to his horror the protrusions were still there, and there were other spots of blue shining through the blood. He wanted to turn away and retch, but he still had a job to do. 

He reached into the wound again and grasped another feather. This one didn’t detach when he pulled it free, but stayed connected to something white and thin that reminded Jason strongly of bone. He suppressed the nausea creeping up his throat and kept pulling, freeing feather after feather through Dick’s torn skin.

Dick let out a sob that sounded like relief when the whole structure was finally free, and Jason hurried to give the tear in his other shoulder the same treatment, all the while willing his brain not to think about what he was doing, because then he’d have to acknowledge that— 

The freed wing twitched. It was a frayed, scraggly thing, with feathers hanging at odd angles on a framework of bone that reminded Jason of large, skeletal fingers. Some feathers were broken and bent, but the blue was vibrant, even underneath the red streaks of blood. As soon as the second wing was fully free Jason recoiled, frantically wiping his hands on the fabric of his pants. Dick had stopped making noises, but he was breathing so hard Jason could see his back moving, even under the limp pile of drying feathers.

“Jay?” Dick finally managed, sounding like he’d been gargling gravel. “Did you put a shock blanket on me?” he asked and a new horror crept up on Jason. He’d thought Dick would have somehow realized— Dick rolled his shoulders and froze. “Didn’t you get it out?” he asked, an edge of panic creeping into his voice. “I can feel— Is there still some shrapnel stuck or something?”

Jason closed his eyes. He should say something. Whatever way he phrased it would be better than letting Dick just find out, but the words wouldn’t come. 

“Jay?” Dick tried again, his voice shaking as he tried to get his knees under himself to sit up. The movement shifted the wings and a long feather brushed against Dick’s upper arm. He froze.

Jason let out a long breath. “Yeah,” he said, "that’s not a shock blanket. Dickiebird, you have wings.”

**Author's Note:**

> Well, this leaves a lot of questions open but thus can be the nature of a flash fic. I wanted to write a snapshot rather than multiple scenes so it's quite open ended. Maybe someday I'll come back to write a sequel about how the batfam (and Dick and Jason in particular) deal with Dick's newly acquired wings.
> 
> Originally there was a lot more context about how they were trying to stop the sorceress from getting a certain artifact and why they were working together, but it just didn't fit.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it! Kudos and comments are deeply appreciated!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Pretty Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21306908) by [Nightwing_Mar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightwing_Mar/pseuds/Nightwing_Mar)
  * [[Podfic] Pretty Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22361002) by [frecklebombfic (frecklebomb)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frecklebomb/pseuds/frecklebombfic)


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